Safety manager: Cop made 'tactical errors'

By Tillie Fong And Sarah Langbein, Rocky Mountain News
October 28, 2004

Denver Manager of Public Safety Al LaCabe testified Thursday he had no "standard of conduct" to review when looking at officer James Turney's actions in the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Paul Childs.

"When you don't have comparable discipline, you have to set a standard," he said.

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LaCabe said he suspended Turney for 10 months without pay for what he called "tactical errors" leading up to the July 5, 2003, shooting of the developmentally disabled teen, and for an alleged threat to his ex-mother-in-law, which Turney denies.

LaCabe's testimony came at Turney's discipline appeal hearing.

He testified he spent an average of 20 hours a day for about 15 days reviewing the fatal shooting of the teen because it was a "watershed moment" for the police department.

LaCabe said Turney had time to slow the chain of events and explore the situation. His options would have increased "tenfold" if he had closed a security door between the teen and himself, or stepped back, LaCabe testified.

"What I'm talking about is safe tactics: Slow down, think, be deliberate, you stay safe," he said.

He noted that someone else had done just that prior to the fatal shooting.

"Mrs. Childs was in the kitchen and Paul was coming toward her with a knife," he said. "She stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door. I would think if she can do that, why can't a trained police officer do the same? It just struck me at the time."

LaCabe's testimony was in sharp contrast to that of Technician Robert Winckler, a firearms and tactics instructor at the Denver Police Academy, who said Turney did what police recruits are trained to do.

"You focus on the threat," he said. "He's that close with a big knife. The focus has to be in getting him to comply."

In other testimony, two police officers said that at the end of a meeting with Hispanic officers in December, they heard Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper say that Turney would not be a police officer as long as he was mayor.

"I was appalled by his position," said Sgt. Leonard Mares of his reaction. "I was shocked that he said it."

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